


In Another's Eyes

by polaroidfiction



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Deviates From Canon, Eventual Romance, Multi, Not yet though, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-07-18 13:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16119170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polaroidfiction/pseuds/polaroidfiction
Summary: NOTE: I'm rewriting this fic from the beginning, fixing a couple crucial mistakes I made right off the bat. This version of the fic will no longer be updated, but when the new version goes up I will post the link/info in a new chapter here.Davian had been dead for two years when his note arrived, summoning the youngest Trevelyan to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Rikke's only stake in the Conclave was finding her brother, if he was indeed alive, and getting him out of the Templars.What a shame, then, that the entire temple was destroyed.And a hole ripped in the sky. That sucked too.(Story following the canon and fanon experiences of my Inquisitor, Rikke Trevelyan, during and after Dragon Age: Inquisition)





	1. Prelude

“Do you remember Davian Trevelyan?”

“Young man who went rogue with the templars and got himself killed?”

“They’re saying he’s alive. They say that Lady Trevelyan isn’t sick, but that the news sent her into hysterics.”

“So what if he’s alive?”

“They say it was in a note. Davian is going to the Conclave, but he’ll only talk to the other daughter.”

“So, they’re sending Kiona insead of Sist— I mean, Mother Lottie?”

“No, the  _ other  _ daughter.”

“They wouldn’t send  _ her  _ to the Conclave. Didn’t they have her en route to Antiva?”

“My friend at the docks says he saw her getting on a Ferelden ship.”

“Maker preserve us. Alive-dead son or no, the Bann should be sending Lottie. She’s the only good thing to come of that family since he inherited the position.”

“Kiona was at least part of the Chantry growing up. Rikke, though…”

“No good will come of Rikke Trevelyan getting near the Divine. On this I swear.”


	2. Rikke Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closing the Breach is a tall order for one who just woke up from a jaunt in the fade, but it may be the only way for Rikke to prove her innocence after the Conclave explosion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much the initial cutscenes/dialogue in The Wrath of Heaven. Some is changed to establish and develop my character and her relationships, but this chapter is not essential to the story if you wish to skip it.

_ I will be at the Conclave. If you send Rikke, I will speak with her. _

_ -Davian _

Rikke awoke in the aftershocks of a violent spasm. Her left hand was clenched shut against stabs of pain that shook her arm like lightning. She blinked, and blinked again, and finally the white spots started to clear from her vision, and she looked down at what caused her such agony. Her hand— firmly shackled to the ground, she noted— glowed green at its center. She slowly opened her fingers, but as she did, the glow flashed with a crack, feeling like fire and lightning and ice all burning her hand to the bone. Her arm jerked involuntarily against the manacles and she felt her heart stutter in her chest. She choked out a cry and curled forward, pressing her forehead against the cool, damp stone of her holding. She heard the shuffling of armored boots and drawn swords around her.

A door slammed open. “Get her up,” a voiced tempered with rage ordered. Two soldiers took Rikke by the shoulders and pulled her back upright, and she found herself looking at a battle-worn woman with cropped black hair and the Seeker of Truth’s armor. The woman’s expression was one of vile, barely contained hatred.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now. You, found alive at the center of an explosion that destroyed the temple, the Conclave, and everyone within,” the woman growled.

“Explosion? The Conclave is… no, that can’t be true,” Rikke said, still somewhat dazed. She looked past the woman and saw another, this one in a hood and chain amor, watching both of them carefully.

“Explain this.” The black haired woman grabbed Rikke’s left wrist and pulled her hand up as far as the chain would allow.

“I don’t… what is it?”

The woman threw Rikke’s hand down and looked like she was about to throw a punch as well, until the hooded woman appeared at her side and guided her out of reach. “We need her, Cassandra.” The hooded woman approached Rikke with arms crossed and asked, “Who are you, exactly? What do you remember up until now?” Her voice was quiet and measured, but her frown no less genuine than the one of the woman called Cassandra.

Rikke strained to remember. Her memories were foggy, like she’d gotten drunk or hit her head. “My name is Rikke. My brother is a templar and I came to the Conclave help him. I remember… I was at the Conclave and I was with him, and then there was… I was… The next thing I remember I was… somewhere else. There were monsters chasing me, but there was someone ahead of me, a woman, I think—”

“A woman?” Cassandra gasped. The hooded woman looked at her, and Cassandra must have read something in her face because she nodded and stepped forward again. “Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I’ll bring her to the rift.” Leliana swiftly vanished through the door as Cassandra knelt to unlock Rikke’s manacles.

“Is… Is everyone really dead?” Rikke cleared her throat, trying to regain control over the tremor that had crept into it.

“We haven’t found any life within a hundred yards of the temple,” Cassandra’s voice was less biting now. “You… have my condolences, for your brother.” Cassandra heaved Rikke to her feet. “Come. We have no more time to waste.”

Rikke followed Cassandra out of the building, squinting in the light that shone off the snow. She raised her hand to shield her eyes, but as she did the mark flashed and pain ripped through her again. Her knees buckled, and she was only kept from hitting the ground by Cassandra’s grip on her arm.

When Rikke righted herself, Cassandra pointed to the sky over the nearest mountain peak. Rikke gasped at the sight of the swirling green maw that pulsed in the sky. “We call it the Breach,” Cassandra said. “It grows with every hour, and every time it does, your mark spreads. It may kill you, or it may be the key to sealing the Breach before it consumes the world.”

“I have to fix that?” Rikke asked, pointed to the Breach. Catching Cassandra’s glare, she stuttered out, “I’ll do whatever I can to help, of course. I just mean, well, it’s really big and I…” Rikke looked at her glowing palm, “It’s a lot to take in.”

“Brace yourself, then. We don’t have time to wander.”

To Rikke’s credit, she gained her composure quickly. Every step she took towards the Breach was made with more confidence than the last, so much that Cassandra was startled when Rikke suddenly took up arms against the demons on the path to the rift. Cassandra almost made her leave the daggers lest she get heady and try for an escape. Fortunately, she proved an ally rather than a traitor, watching Cassandra’s back on the field as well as her own. Rikke only balked for a moment when they reached the first fade rift, taking in the sight of demons spilling forth from the fade before— 

“Duck!”

Rikke dropped to a knee and a crossbow bolt whistled over her head and into the face of a shade. 

“That’s four for me!” Rikke glanced at the speaker and saw a dwarf wielding a bizarre crossbow. His hair was pulled back and he wore clothes far too bright for the landscape under a heavy overcoat. Not quite pompous, certainly fun.

“Enjoy the lead while it lasts!” Rikke shouted at him before leaping, quite literally, into the fray. Her daggers tore into the demons like teeth, and she soon narrowed the gap between her and the dwarf’s kill counts. For the first time since she’d awoken, she smiled brightly. Despite everything that had occured in the past hours, there was nothing like friendly competition to put her back into a good mood.

Rikke came back to reality as a slender elf hand caught her wrist and held it out to the rift. Tendrils lashed out from her palm, and she felt as though her whole arm were being pulled from the inside toward the rift. She clenched her hand and yanked it away, and the rift closed with a crack. Looking around, she realized that they’d beaten every demon in the area back into the fade.

“It worked!” Cassandra exclaimed.

“As I thought it would,” the elf said. Rikke looked him over. Pale, bald, wearing simple clothes sewn for function over form; he would be entirely unassuming if not for the staff in his hand labeling him as an apostate. “This bodes well for our ability to seal the Breach,” he continued.

“We should keep moving, Leliana is waiting for us at the forward camp.”

“Good, I’ll be glad to get somewhere I’m not up to my neck in demons,” the dwarf added from his perch.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rikke quipped, “Neck-deep on you is only arse-deep on the rest of us. Hardly anything to complain about as far as world-ending demon invasions go.”

“If it were so easy, you’d have more than six kills to my eight!” The dwarf joined the group and held his hand out to Rikke. “Varric Tethras, rogue, storyteller, and occasional unwelcome tagalong.” He shot a wink in Cassandra’s direction, to which she only glowered.

“Rikke,” Rikke shook Varric’s hand. “Though any titles I could string together would be far less interesting.”

“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions,” the elf mage chimed. “I’m glad to see you yet live.”

“He means ‘I kept that mark from killing you while you slept,’” Varric said.

“My gratitude,” Rikke said, tipping her head to Solas. The sky flashed green, and Rikke gritted her teeth, clenching her arm against the pain and spasms that ripped through it a moment later. “Agh, let’s get moving. The sooner we get up there the sooner I don’t have to deal with  _ that _ anymore.”

The group fell into step, climbing further up the mountain to the forward camp. After closing another fade rift, Rikke followed Cassandra to where Leliana stood tense, arguing with a Chantry brother.

“Chancellor Roderick, I insist that you—”

The chancellor pointed to Cassandra as she neared the table. “Seeker, as Grand Chancellor, I order you to take the prisoner to Val Royeaux at once to face execution!”

“You order me? You, a glorified clerk?”

“In the absence of a Divine you must defer to the present authority!”

“Are you serious? Grand Chancellor is hardly that much,” Rikke cut in, clasping her hands behind her back. “You barely have the presence to order templars. If anything you should be deferring to her!”

“You have a lot of gall to speak on the Chantry hierarchy after you've done so much to destroy it, girl.”

Rikke opened her mouth to snap back, but caught Leliana giving her a peculiar stare, like she was parsing out a puzzle. She closed her mouth and stepped back, releasing her hands.

“If we are to elect a new Divine, we must first seal the Breach, and that means we need her to…”

Rikke stepped back from the argument and leaned against the wall of the bridge, arms crossed. Varric raised his eyebrows and gestured to the three leaders crowding the charts on the table. “Nothing to say to all that?”

“I’ve met enough  _ thinkers _ to know how this will play out. They’ll argue for a while, disagree on every point, make no progress from where they started, and glare at each other until someone comes in and tells them all what to do. Best to just wait until that point rather than exhaust yourself debating.”

Cassandra looked up from the table. “Rikke, how do you think we should proceed?”

“Like I said,” Rikke rumbled to Varric before joining the others at the table. “Options?”

“You can join the main charge to the temple, or you can take the mountain pass while the soldiers act as a diversion,” Leliana said, tracing the pass with a finger. “Going through the mountains would be slower, but you would face little resistance on the way.”

“However, we lost an entire squad on that path. It may not be as safe as it seems,” Cassandra added.

“Or you could turn yourself in,” Chancellor Roderick said, biting every syllable, “and call a retreat. Stop the bloodshed here.”

“We take the mountain pass. The potential for safety is better than the guarantee of danger. Besides, the scouts may yet be up there. With luck, we could get them to safety,” Rikke answered. The chancellor sputtered angrily.

Cassandra frowned, but nodded. “Leliana, get everyone from the valley. Everyone. We’ll meet you in the temple soon.”

Cassandra motioned to Rikke and the others to follow, and led the way along the winding path up to the peak.


	3. Andraste's Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Commander Cullen has every reason to believe in Rikke's guilt, but if she was behind the Breach, why would she be willing to put herself in a coma in an attempt to close it?

“I hope they’re right about you, for all our sakes.”

For what it was worth, Cullen told the truth: he _hoped_. But he didn’t believe.

The prisoner had arrived at the ruin of the temple covered head to toe in grit and demonic bile. She was a young woman, slight in frame, wearing nondescript armor. On any other day, Cullen would have thought nothing of her. But, of course, this was not any other day, and she was no longer just another face in the crowd; she was The One Who Survived, the possible murderer of hundreds or thousands of people. And amidst it all, all the death, all the ruin, all the claims against her, she smiled. When she arrived in the temple, she’d been laughing uproariously at one of Varric’s jokes. She answered him with one of her own even as she ran past the corpses of everyone lost in the blast and the fighting since. It made his stomach turn.

So no, Cullen did not believe she was the savior Thedas was praying for. But he held hope. _For all our sakes_.

The picture of her stayed in Cullen’s mind even as he returned to camp, much to his ire. Part of him just couldn’t connect the dots. _That_ was the prisoner? She looked like eager cadets he’d trained, a grinning girl with face full of freckles and brown hair fallen loose from her ponytail. And, Maker, she looked so young, early twenties at the oldest. She was certainly not what he imagined when prompted with ‘Divine Justinia’s murderer.’ Not that it mattered; Cullen had sincere doubts that someone scrappy as she would survive the fight she had walked into.

“Commander.”

A soldier’s voice drew Cullen back to the present. “Report,” he ordered.

“The scouts from the mountain pass are all accounted for. Four were killed, and three went straight to the medics. The rest await orders, and their report is on the way.”

“Bring it to me when it’s done, then allow the scouts to rest. We need them at their best in a fight like this,” Cullen said, his thoughts returning to his duties. He was soon swamped by runners reporting different areas of the valley cleared of demons after the prisoner closed the rifts. Regardless of the prisoner’s actions at the Conclave, she’d done some good in the time since. He assigned the soldiers to new posts and set about having the wounded moved back to Haven for treatment.

Less than an hour had passed when a new shockwave shook the temple and the valley below. Cullen turned from the table he was working at to look up to the temple and the hole in the sky over it. He watched it for one minute, then two, then five. Around him, soldiers and priests alike started to question, then cry out, then cheer. “Maker’s breath…” Cullen murmured, “It stopped growing. They really stopped it.”

The soldiers returned from the temple soon after, pouring into camp in waves. It appeared every stretcher they’d sent up to the temple was being used to transport injured and dead. Cullen strained to see if Cassandra or Leliana had emerged yet, but he could hardly see through the post-battle commotion. All around him soldiers were recounting the battle, evidently a long and hard-fought victory, in jubilant voices. They described how the prisoner was the first to engage the monstrous pride demon, daggers flying, and how even after all the wounds she’d sustained she stayed on her feet long enough to close the rift feeding the Breach before she collapsed.

“Wounds?” Cullen snapped back to the present and grabbed a passing soldier by the arm. “The prisoner, the one who sealed the rift, where is she?”

“C-Commander, Seeker Pentaghast ordered her brought back to Haven right away, sir! She’s probably being transported there now, and the Seeker would be with her.”

Cullen released his grip on the man’s arm. He watched the flow of soldiers for a few moments more before walking to a nearby tent. He ducked under the half-raised flap and approached the makeshift desk inside. “Rylen, I’m going to meet Seeker Pentaghast in Haven. Hold this camp until we confirm the temple is safe, then pull the footsoldiers back to the village. Maintain scouts in the area, and send word immediately if anything in the temple changes.”

“Understood, sir.” Rylan nodded. Cullen left the tent to retrieve his horse.

Haven was abuzz with activity, almost as lively as when the had Conclave opened days prior. Mourning the dead had been put aside as stories about the Breach flew from mouth to ear to mouth. Most, of course, centered on the prisoner, her appearance from the fade, and the mark that she used to seal the rifts in the valley.

Cullen turned in the saddle to look back up at the Breach. It swirled quietly, no longer tethered to the ground, and the same size it had been when the battle ended. What did it mean that it wasn’t closed entirely, as planned? How in the world would they proceed from here?

As Cullen neared the gate, he heard a great commotion coming from the other side, overwhelmed by the unmistakable sound of Cassandra’s booming voice. He hurriedly dismounted and entered the village proper. He stood faced with a growing mass of villagers, priests, pilgrims, and even some of his own soldiers pressing in on Cassandra and a pair of guards who blocked the door to the nearby home. Cullen forced his way through the crowd up to the steps of the building. “Back to your homes, all of you!” he shouted over the clamor. He sent the guard beside him for reinforcements and drew his sword, still shouting. Only upon seeing his blade did the mass start to back off.

It took many minutes of pressure from the reinforcements to finally disperse the crowd. Even then, many lingered in the area casting glances at the door. Cullen sheathed his weapon with a heavy sigh.

“I want four guards on this door at all times,” Cassandra ordered the soldier beside her.

“Right away, ser,” she answered with a nod and jogged away.

Cullen watched her go. “What was all that about?” he asked Cassandra.

“Rikke was brought back with the first squad to leave the temple. People soon heard that she was the one to stop the Breach, and the whole of Haven came after her. We moved her in here to be treated safely in private.”

“What did they want with her?”

“I’m sure some still blame her for what happened and intended to exact their own justice, but…” Cassandra lowered her voice. “I heard some talk. Hearing what she did, coupled with rumors about the woman in the rift she came out of, people are calling her a— a miracle. A savior delivered by Andraste. They wanted to see the blessing with their own eyes.”

“A savior? A few hours ago there wasn’t a soul who wouldn’t condemn her.” _That’s not true,_ Cullen’s mind responded to his words, summoning him back to Kirkwall. Even if the prisoner— if Rikke claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Conclave, someone, somewhere would show her mercy.

“If she so much as lives until nightfall, I might even be inclined to believe it.” Catching Cullen’s glance, Cassandra continued, “Her injuries were grave; it’s a wonder she sustained herself as long as she did. As soon as the rift was closed she… let go, I suppose, and she fell unconscious. By the time I got to her, she was already as cold as ice. Solas used magic to keep her alive until we made it back to Haven, but it drained him. She is in the medics’ hands now, and we can only hope for the best.”

Cullen looked to the Breach. _For all our sakes._

 

* * *

 

Whether by divine miracle or not, Rikke did not die before nightfall, though, as Cullen found out, it was not for lack of trying.

In the evening following the battle, Cullen too came to hear the rumors and tales that had been spun about Rikke. It seemed she was elevated in status with every hour that passed, rising from miracle to blessing to savior to prophet. With night falling, and the Breach lighting the sky like a second moon, Cullen’s curiosity overcame him. He approached the house where Rikke was being tended.

As he raised a hand to knock on the door, he heard a rattled, seizing gasp, almost a cry, come from within, accompanied by the frightened voice of an elven servant. He took half a step back, startled.

“The doctor said it’s seizures, sir. Started a few hours ago,” one of the guards said without looking at him. Her brow was tense and her lips pursed; it was evident she’d had to listen to this sound many times. Cullen slowly turned back to the door and knocked. The elf inside yelped and the door swung open.

“M-My lord, my deepest apologies, Lady Rikke fell off the bed and I can’t lift her myself, I was only meant to bring the elfroot, but there was nobody else here—”

“Cassandra ordered there be a medic with her at all times! Go send for one, now, I’ll stay in the meantime.”

The elf ducked her head and hurried out without another word. Cullen looked into the room and saw the elf spoke true. Rikke lay on her side on the floor beside the bed, her head dangerously close to the chair beside it. It appeared the seizure had passed, but Rikke’s breathing was still rapid and shadow. Cullen knelt beside her and carefully lifted her back onto the bed. He noted a number of her injuries: heavy bandaging on her arms and one shoulder, a brace on her ankle, and a cut down on her right across her lips. The mark on her hand caught his eye too; it only glowed faintly now, and its scarred edges were clearer against her cold, clammy skin.

He sat in the chair and resigned himself to wait for the medic. The candlelight of the room was dim, lulling him into drowsiness. A hitch in Rikke’s breath snapped him awake again; surely he was not about to watch her succumb to her injuries? But her breath returned to its previous rhythm a moment later. He sighed and ran a hand down his face.

Rikke was an asset, yes. Maker only knew what they would do if she died now with the Breach still a threat. But Cullen wondered how wrong his initial judgements of her, not as that asset, but as a person, had been. If she had orchestrated the explosion, what cause did she have to cooperate with Cassandra, to save his scouts, and to push herself to risk of death to stop the Breach’s expansion? Was it possible she really was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or with all the rumors about the things people saw in the fade: first an Andrastian woman, then the Divine herself calling out to Rikke for help, could she even be something more? Templar or not, Cullen felt loyal to the Chantry, and the implications of there being a new prophet lying here unsettled him deeply. But his first duty was to the Inquisition and to restore order to Thedas. The Conclave had failed, so the Inquisition would soon be formed in proper, with Cullen its Commander…

“Commander, Commander Cullen, sir!”

Cullen jerked awake. He blinked blearily at the medic in front of him. He pushed himself up from the chair but his back immediately protested, aching from the slouch he'd sunk into when he fell asleep. “Maker, what time..?”

“Crack of dawn, sir.”

Cullen groaned. “Dawn? I sent for a medic hours ago.”

“My apologies, sir, word only reached me this morning. I assumed that someone else had…” Cullen’s glare cut the medic short. “I-In any case, I took her vitals and she's showing marked improvement. Her breathing and pulse are normal, and her skin is warm to the touch.”

Cullen glanced down where Rikke lay. Her breathing was indeed slow and deep, and she had color in her face that had been absent the night before. Cullen nodded. “Make a note, one medic is not to leave her until the next arrives. If something had gone wrong last night, it could have spelled disaster for all of us.”

“Right, sir, I will, sir.”

Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. This was hardly the way he hoped to start his day. “Andraste's bloody… and make sure the note gets to your officer. I want a full report on medic and assistant assignments done today. If an order from Lady Cassandra wasn't followed, I dread to think of the care you're giving the rest of our injured.” Cullen sulked out of the house, pushing his hair back as he walked.

Haven had begun to rouse itself. The sound of officers barking orders to the trainees echoed from outside the village wall. A group of lay sisters heading to the morning chant burst into giggles as Cullen marched by them. Across the way, a few Orlesian pilgrims sat around a fire in the middle of their cluster of tents, already preparing breakfast. Nobody paid the Breach any mind. They felt safe, even after everything that had occurred just the previous day. Rikke had given them that luxury.

Let the Chantry to debate whether Rikke was some confluence of fate and divine intervention. Cullen saw what really mattered in the faces of the people who lived to see this sunrise because of her.


	4. The Bard and the Diplomat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leliana and Josephine see what they can parse out about Rikke's past.  
> (Revised 3/9/19)

Leliana’s steps were heavy as she entered the office. “Josephine.”

“Good afternoon, Sister Leliana,” Josephine answered without looking up from her documents. She finished writing a few last lines and sprinkled the wet ink with pounce. She set the document aside and folded her hands on the desk.

Leliana motioned the researcher out of the room and closed the door behind her. She sat opposite Josephine and rested her chin on her knuckles, brows furrowed. “The more I learn about this Herald of Andraste, the more I question what her motives were before the Maker got involved.”

“You finished examining her possessions, I take it?”

“Yes. Harritt identified her armor as Marcher in make, but said it was too stock to pin to a specific city. The daggers she carried when she was found were plain, but showed no wear despite Cassandra saying she was clearly an experienced rogue.”

“Newly purchased then?” Josephine leaned forward with interest.

“Certainly so. Interestingly, she carried almost everything she needed on her person. Just on her belt she had travel rations, a map of the mountains, and even soap. If she had other possessions in the temple, they wouldn’t have been much.”

“Someone experienced with travelling light, then. It’s starting to sound like she might be a spy after all.”

“I thought so too, but then I found this hidden very securely under the plate of her armor. She clearly didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on it.” Leliana pulled a slip of parchment from her belt and handed it to Josephine.

“I will be at the Conclave. If you send Rikke, I will speak with her. Signed Davian,” Josephine read. “So someone sent her. How does this rule out her being a spy?”

“She gave me the same name yesterday. No good infiltrator would give interrogators the name associated with her orders. If she is a spy, she wasn’t at the Conclave on a job. As it stands, this note only corroborates her story, if we assume Davian is her brother.”

“You think she was telling the truth?”

Leliana pondered the question. “There are still pieces missing. When she challenged the chancellor’s authority, she saw me watching and backed down, like her knowledge of his rank and of the Seekers was meant to be secret. I also don’t know what she meant when she said she was at the Conclave to ‘help’ her brother. Her words were always vague, and with the information from her belongings, I’m certain it was deliberate. But despite all of this, I don’t believe she came with any hostile intent. I can’t imagine then what she’s hiding, or why.”

“Perhaps she has a reputation that she didn’t want following her here,” Josephine suggested. “Excommunication, perhaps, since she's so knowledgeable of the Chantry's inner workings. Or it could be her brother’s reputation she was avoiding. If Davian is a templar rebel—” Josephine suddenly covered a gasp with one delicate hand, eyes wide. “Give me a moment!” She jumped up from the desk and began scanning a bookshelf. She pulled one massive volume from the shelf and dropped it on her desk, then moved to another bookshelf and began reading the spines there.

“What are you thinking, Josie?” Leliana asked, standing to look over Josephine’s shoulder. Josephine pulled another book and laid it on her desk beside the first, then put her hands on her hips with a pleased smile. Leliana turned her head to read the covers. “Templar records from the Free Marches, and… _Un Histoire d’Ostwick_?”

Josephine’s eyes glittered as she explained, “A memoir. I initially purchased it simply to learn about potential connections the Inquisition could make in Ostwick. Being written by an Orlesian nobleman, it of course includes a section all about Ostwick’s recent scandals, including tell of…” Josephine heaved open the larger volume to the middle and began flipping through it. “Let me see, Ostwick… likely served in the Chantry itself… R, S, T… here!” She stopped her finger on a name in the registry. “Davian Trevelyan, third child of the Trevelyan noble family of Ostwick. He caused uproar among Ostwick’s nobility when he joined the rebelling templars, and he was thought recently dead when this memoir was written two years ago.”

“And does he have—”

“— three sisters,” Josephine nodded, opening the memoire to one of many marked pages. “Their names: Kiona, Lottie, and _Rikke_.”

A smile creeped onto Leliana’s lips. “Sometimes I swear that in another life it could be you doing my job. Does this book say anything more of her?”

“Only as an afterthought. ‘Davian’s death came as a relief to some with ties to the family, as it drew the eye away from the troublesome escapades of the Bann’s youngest.’ However, even that much would explain—”

Josephine was cut off by Cassandra's voice passing outside the office. “I have important business to attend to, _Chancellor_ , I ask that allow me to complete…” Cassandra's voice faded away as she passed.

Leliana shook her head. “My apologies, Josie. I must join Cassandra. You should speak with the Herald when she wakes up and see if the story she gives you matches that lead.”

“Of course. And… good luck with the Chancellor.”

Leliana gave Josephine one last smile before leaving the office. As soon as the door clicked shut, Josephine fell into her chair and leaned forward onto the desk, clutching her arms about her head. She let out an exasperated sigh and waited for the blush to fade from her cheeks. “Get it together, Montilyet,” she muttered. At length she pushed herself back up and looked across the contents of her desk. Brow furrowed, she shifted the books aside and leafed through a stack of unsent letters until she found one bound for Ostwick. 

The Trevelyans were purportedly a house known for their Chantry ties. She’d intended to leverage the Inquisition’s connection to the Divine in order to gain their allegiance, but Rikke’s position as the Herald of Andraste provided an entirely new and vastly more personal link. That is, assuming the Trevelyans would accept her as such, or even believe that Rikke was indeed their daughter; word of the Conclave would reach them soon if it hadn’t already, and with it the assumption that anyone they’d sent was dead. And, of course, assuming they were right about Rikke at all. Josephine exhaled sharply and dropped the letter in with the paper scraps. She pinched the bridge of her nose and considered how to proceed. If she could just  _ speak _ with Rikke she might be able to sort some of this out, but until Rikke recovered the Inquisition was at a standstill, rudderless.

Josephine picked out a blank scrap of paper and wrote a short note. Giving the ink just enough time to dry, she folded it in half and wrote Rikke’s name on the outside. This complete, Josephine stood from the desk and made her way out of the chantry. The sound of Cassandra arguing echoed dully through the hall, and Josephine felt momentary relief that she did not have to deal with those particular conflicts often. She paused as she stepped outside. Her breath fogged in the air, but there was no wind and the sun shone brightly, so for once she didn’t feel the bite of cold. It wasn’t Antiva City by any means, but she had learned to appreciate such mercies after so long in the… frankly, the dregs of Ferelden. She squared her shoulders and strode down through the village, careful to step only on the thin strip of hard, dry land between the muddy middles of the lanes and the snow banks at their edges. After a few treacherous, wobbly minutes she came upon the steps of a heavily guarded home, her shoes none the worse for wear.

Recognizing Josephine’s station, the guards parted for her to enter. Inside the house was substantially warmer than outside, but smelled almost overpoweringly of medicines and elfroot. An apprentice nodded at Josephine’s entry before returning to the book in his lap. He was slouched in a chair at Rikke’s side, evidently bored with watching over her. Josephine placed the note with Rikke’s belongings, now neatly stacked on a nearby shelf. 

As Josephine turned to leave, she stole a moment to examine Rikke’s features. Rikke’s skin was paler than she would expect of a Marcher native, let alone one with a mother from… Tevinter, was it? Her jaw was high and narrow as well, far from anything that would appear in a long and prolific noble line. Her face was heavy with freckles, and her lips were swollen on one side from a jagged cut across them. She had a short nose and messy brown hair and altogether she looked wholly… common. Perhaps Josephine had been wrong after all.

Josephine made her exit and started on her narrow path back to the chapel. What fancy had overtaken her to go on this little excursion was gone, and she once again felt the weight of all she had to organize and her lack of tools to organize it with. She hoped that the coming days presented merely challenge and not disaster.

 


End file.
